


Someone who's nothing like you

by epersonae



Series: Aftermath [18]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Forgiveness, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 14:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12889485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Magnus has a tattoo. Lucretia has regrets.





	Someone who's nothing like you

**Author's Note:**

> This started with a question about whether Lucretia had any tattoos, jumped to the idea that Magnus definitely has a tattoo to remind him of Julia, and then that idea grabbed hold of my brain.
> 
> Title from Devils Backbone by The Civil Wars, which was the musical accompaniment to writing it.

She touches his bicep, lightly tracing the muscles with her fingertips. She used to love doing that, during their long years aboard the Starblaster, and she still does, though there’s both more muscle — sustained years of work and training — and more fat, as he ages, eats well, lives well. And of course the scars of the rebel and the mercenary.

But she traces the tattoo, the blacksmith’s hammer with the red ribbon around it, the woman’s name in delicate script. She doesn’t look at his face, just at the lines embedded in the skin, but she can feel the sorrow that always falls on his face like a shadow when something reminds him of Julia.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“Why are  _ you _ sorry?” he says, his voice tight with unexpressed grief.

She doesn’t even know how to begin, really. So she stays silent, keeps her eyes on the black of the hammer’s head, the red of the ribbon.

“You didn’t kill her.”

“Maybe I could’ve saved her.”

“I wouldn’t have known her if it wasn’t for you.”

She touches the letters that trace down his arm: Julia Burnsides.

“I didn’t….” She breathes, slowly, in and then out and then in again. “I didn’t want to let you go.”

“But you did.” He doesn’t look at her either. “You decided that plan was more to you than I was. So….”

Her breath catches in her throat.

“So Julia and I fought together, side by side, were going to….” He might be crying, but she still can’t look at him. “But it’s not your fault, and please don’t say you’re sorry.”

“But –”

The tattoo, the whorls of wood of the handle, the shading of fabric, it moves out of her line of vision as he turns to look at her. He puts two fingers under her chin. She doesn't want to tip up her face, but she's looking at him anyway. This scarred face, these tears, that sad smile. 

“No,” he says, and she doesn't know what that means, really, but he kisses her. Not as he did when they were twenty and a hundred, and surely not as he kissed the woman whose name is written on his body (in ink, in scars, in time), but as he kisses her now, both of them with tears in their eyes. 


End file.
